


The Twilight Town Paranormal Society

by InterstellarVagabond



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Gen, M/M, Sea Salt Family, T.T.P.S, Twilight Town (Kingdom Hearts), post kh3, sea salt trio, twilight town gang
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-11
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2019-10-26 10:35:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 7,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17744309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InterstellarVagabond/pseuds/InterstellarVagabond
Summary: Strange things happen in the sleepy sunset town famous for salty-sweet ice cream and the clocktower that rings out all over the square. Trains with no passengers travel to unknown worlds, monsters lurk in the dark woods, animated bags... well turn out to be dogs. Still, Twilight Town is full of the strange and unexplained and someone has to look into it! Who better than Hayner and friends alongside the four new former Nobodies who have chosen Twilight Town as their new home? The T.T.P.S is formed and monsters better look out!





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> love how AO3 takes my careful formatting and indentations and such and just chucks 'em out the window T_T

Another day in Twilight Town, with a sleepy sense of calm that was quickly becoming strangely familiar to the four new residents. It wasn’t long ago they were fighting a battle, some on opposite sides, for the the fate of the worlds. Today they were grabbing lunch, sitting on the steps of the train station and watching people come and go. Axel, Roxas, Xion, and Isa, the four strangers that Twilight Town had been quick to welcome as locals who were still adjusting to a quiet life. 

“Hey! Roxas!”

Well, relatively quiet.

Hayner came running up, shouting and waving his arms to get Roxas’s attention. Roxas, who was nodding and making a ‘dude quiet down’ motion with his hands, got to his feet and accepted the greeting high five from his friend. It didn’t matter to either of them that they’d only been friends in a fictional datascape, Hayner had been quick to accept Roxas into the group and Roxas had easily fallen back into their old dynamic. 

“What’s up?” Roxas asked. “And don’t say Seifer, cause I know he’s a jerk but keyblades really aren’t for showing jerks who’s boss.”

“You’ll change your mind on that when you hear what he’s been saying about you,” Hayner said with a smirk. “But no, that’s not why I’m here. I need you and your magic friends for a totally kickass mission.”

“And how much does this ‘totally kickass mission’ pay?” Axel remarked dryly from the steps, a smirk on his lips. 

“None for you,” Hayner replied. “You’re still on thin ice.”

“Jeez, one kidnapping and-” Axel started to joke, but Isa elbowed him in the ribs and his joke turned into a grunt of pain. “Yeah, I really am sorry about that.”

“Besides!” came a response mixed with panting as Pence and Olette ran up to join the group. Pence recovered his breath, hands on his knees before speaking again. “Besides! It’s not about the pay!”

“It’s about the adventure!” Olette said. 

“And discovering Twilight Town’s hidden secrets!” Pence added.

“C’mon, you’re in, right?” Hayner asked. “You’re totally in.”

Roxas looked back to the other three. 

“Sounds like fun,” Xion said with a smile, and Isa just shrugged and nodded. 

“Why not, it’s getting boring around here anyway,” Axel sighed, standing and stretching. 

“You were just talking about taking a third nap of the day,” Isa pointed out. 

“I can have a steady balance of action to sleeping if I want,” Axel shot back. “I’m a man of hidden depths.”

“You’re just lazy.” Isa sighed, making Xion and Roxas laugh. 

“Traitors,” Axel said, hands on his hips as he pretended to glare down at the teenagers. 

“We’re in,” Roxas said to Hayner. “What’s the mission?”

“Well first, you’re going to need a change of clothes!” Olette said.

The four “magic friends” made confused expressions and examined their clothes, before Olette gestured for them to follow her. 

 

Back at the Usual Spot, Olette unpacked a big cardboard box. Her and the others had pooled their money to get the t-shirts and jackets made, and they were all pretty proud of them. They were all black, with the letters T.T.P.S. on the back and a picture on the front of the clocktower with a mysterious monster winding its way up around it. On the jackets the picture was on the right arm. 

“T.T.P.S?” Xion asked, eying the jacket she’d chosen. 

“Twilight Town Paranormal Society!” Pence explained with a grin. “It’s our new organization!”

The four former Organization XIII members shared an ironic an pained look. 

“So you study the paranormal?” Isa asked, putting on his own jacket. 

“Yeah, there’s a whole lot of weird stuff going on in Twilight Town,” Hayner said. “I’m sure you’ve noticed it.”

“The Seven Wonders,” Roxas said fondly. 

“Not just that!” Olette said. “There’s been reports of even weirder stuff than magic staircases and moving bags.”

“Someone’s gotta deal with this stuff,” Hayner said. “Who better than us?”

“Right.” Axel smirked. “So where do we start, shorty?”

“Shorty?” Hayner huffed, rounding on Axel angrily.

“That’s easy,” Pence said, ignoring the impending altercation and flipping open his laptop. “Lately, people on the Twilight Town Community page have been complaining about a lot of weird stuff. Things going missing, fights breaking out, and strange shadows.”

“Shadows?” Isa asked, his face growing thoughtful.

“Could be heartless?” Xion asked, and he shrugged. 

“We shouldn’t be quick to assume,” he said. “We haven’t seen any heartless in a long time, and rushing to conclusions is dangerous.”

“If it’s heartless, we’re ready,” Roxas said. “So no worries!”

“We thought it could be that too,” Olette said. “That’s why we wanted you guys on the case.”

“Good to have a couple of keyblade wielders on any dangerous job,” Axel said. “Oh, and Isa.”

Isa rolled his eyes.

“We were going to check out the main square,” Olette said. “That’s where most of the weird stuff has been happening.”

“Then what are we waiting for?” Roxas asked. Him and the other kids nodded and started running for the main square. Axel and Isa waited behind a bit.

“It’s good to see them hanging out with other kids,” Axel said fondly. “They need a normal life.”

“Yeah…” Isa said. “So do we, Lea.”

Axel sighed and rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly before nodding. “We do, don’t we? Kinda forgot.”

“Of all the things to not have memorized,” Isa teased. “The fact that you’re human?”

“Hey we weren’t human for a really long time,” Axel pointed out. “It’s been sneaking around and killing for longer than I can remember.”

Axel sighed and his shoulders dipped a little as he thought about it. He had been really worried about Roxas and Xion adjusting to a normal life, but here he was struggling with it. 

Isa approached him, looking seriously at him for awhile before poking him in the temple. 

“Cheer up,” he said. “You’ll get wrinkles.”

“Hey now,” Axel chuckled, batting Isa’s hand away. “You’re three months older than me you know, if anyone’s at risk of wrinkles.”

“Well, you’re the one playing mom to all these kids,” Isa smirked. “I hear parenting ages you tremendously.”

“Oh, like you’re getting out of this,” Axel said. “I saw you helping Xion text Naminé the other day, you’re in mom-town too.”

Isa shrugged. “Well, you going to go watch your kids or are we just going to sit here all day and argue over who’s gone softer?”

“You’re just scared cause you know I can out-argue you,” Axel said triumphantly. Isa rolled his eyes and took Axel’s chin in his hand, pulling him into a kiss.

“Well, at least something shuts you up,” Isa smirked.

“Cheater!” Axel swiped playfully at Isa, who dodged effortlessly and gestured to follow the kids.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all I'm begging you to go check out this totally amazing art allyekat did of Xion and Roxas in their T.T.P.S jackets I'm crying http://allyekatdraws.tumblr.com/post/182767963658/matchingjackets-for-interstellarvagabond-s
> 
> sorry for the short chapter this time T_T the next one is gonna be a better size promise!

Pence was taking pictures with a camera, photos sliding out into his hands after each flash and click. He was trying to focus on the evidence, the claw marks in the walls and crates and the scattered Struggle merch: ripped and stained t-shirts and foam clubs ripped to shreds.

“Hey, get one of me!” Hayner teased, posing by the Struggle booth and flexing.

“Be serious, Hayner,” Olette said, yanking him out of the frame. “We’re investigating here.”

Roxas chuckled, it really was like nothing had changed at all. It felt strange, knowing so much about his three friends when they were still just starting to get to know him. They were welcoming to him, and kind, and he never should have doubted they would be because he knew his friends were good people but… they still didn’t know him yet.

“Do you think it was heartless, Roxas?”

Well, some of his friends knew him better than maybe he even knew himself. Xion absolutely did, and he didn’t know if it was their shared bond through Sora or if she was just that attentive. 

“I dunno,” he replied, kneeling down to examine the claw marks. 

“What happened here?” Isa asked the man running the booth. 

“I just left for a second to grab an ice cream,” the man sighed, looking at his ruined stock and the teenagers hopping around taking pictures of it. “When I came back everything was destroyed! My boss is gonna be so mad.”

“Eh, we’ll vouch for ya,” Axel said with a shrug. “Don’t sweat it.”

“We can try, but we didn’t see anything,” Isa reminded him.

“Have you seen anything strange in the area lately?” Pence asked the man, and before he could answer Hayner jumped in.

“Do you think it has anything to do with the shadows people have been seeing lately?” he asked.

“I don’t know!” the man insisted. “I just work here!”

“It doesn’t look like we can find much out here,” Xion said. “Anything or anyone could have done this. We should stake out and see if we can catch whoever’s doing this in the act.”

“That’s a good idea!” Olette said, and Isa also nodded. 

“Take Roxas and head to that rooftop to…” he stopped suddenly, realizing he was in the middle of giving orders. He frowned, looking down at his feet. 

Xion looked surprised for a minute, but then she chuckled and rolled her eyes. “Sure thing, boss.”

“I… I’m sorry,” Isa said, but Roxas and Xion both laughed now.

“Old habits, we get it,” Roxas said. “Besides, you’re not wrong. The roof is a good place to hide out and watch.”

“You two shouldn’t be so quick to forgive,” Isa huffed. 

“Lighten up,” Axel bumped Isa with one shoulder. “Let’s split into groups and take different spots, sound good?”

“I’m going with Roxas!” Hayner, who had been watching the internal Organization drama curiously and was quick to lighten the mood.

“Of course you are,” Olette teased, getting a glare from Hayner out of it.

“Xion, you wanna come with us?” Pence asked.

“Sure!” Xion grinned. 

“I’ll go with Roxas and this punk,” Axel said, ignoring Hayner’s outburst at a second nickname. “Isa, you go with the others. We’ll figure this out fast and be eating celebratory ice cream before you know it.”

“You just want an excuse to eat ice cream,” Isa said.

“Don’t we all?” Pence grinned.

“I like this kid,” Axel said.

“Alright team, keep your phones on, I’ve made us a group chat and we can update each other if we see anything,” Olette said. “You ready to go? Pence, Xion, Mr. Isa?”

“You don’t have to call me that,” Isa said, blushing a little as the other former Organization members snickered.

“We’re ready,” Xion confirmed. “Meet you guys back here later.”


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> okay I know I promised a longer chapter but turns out instead you get a shorter chapter sooner asldklkjfas sorry at least I've been updating quick if nothing else

“Well,” Axel said, peering down at sleepy town below. “This is fun.”

“Something’s gonna happen,” Hayner insisted.

Roxas tried to stay focused on recon, but he had to agree with Axel that it was getting a little boring. Even Hayner eventually started playing a game on his phone, and Roxas was tempted to do the same. 

Roxas watched the group chat instead, a happy balance between vigilance and entertainment.

**SeaThalassa:** there’s a lot of people out and about today! I don’t see anything strange though.

**CraftCharm:** it is the weekend, people are out enjoying the day. Don’t forget the homework Hayner!

**StruggleChamp1:** lay off, O, I’ll get 2 it when I get 2 it

**LunarLoner:** who decided these nicknames?

**LunarLoner:** nevermind, I see mine it was Lea wasn’t it

**SpytFyre:** I only changed yours :P

**Keykid:** I think I see something

Roxas pocketed his phone again, watching as an altercation broke out down on the street below. 

“Screw off man, I didn’t touch it!” one teenager was saying to another, giving him a shove. 

“One second it’s here, the next it’s gone,” the other kid said. “You were the only one around it had to be you, why are you lying?”

“I’m not lying I didn’t touch your stupid computer!” 

They started fighting, shoving each other pack and forth and shouting in each other’s faces. However, they weren’t the only interesting thing in the area. Roxas noticed that as they fought, in the shadows of a nearby building something was stirring. He noticed small dark figures, one of which was holding a laptop. It almost looked like as the two teenagers were fighting, the shadowy figures were getting bigger.

“I think that’s our cue,” Axel said, his keyblade appearing in a flash of heat and sparks. Hayner gaped as him and Roxas leapt from the building, landing on their fear below. The figures in the shadows dropped the laptop and turned on the keyblade wielders. 

“Those aren’t heartless,” Roxas said.

“No, but they look familiar,” Axel said. “Let’s just take them out, huh?”

They fought against the monsters easily, most of them were small and went down quick though a couple of them did get the jump on Axel when he threw his keyblade to reach a far off enemy.

“What did I tell you about throwing?” Roxas teased as Axel used fire magic to burn the monsters to a crisp, and summoned his keyblade back into his hand.

“It worked didn’t it?” Axel huffed.

When the last monster went down, Roxas and Axel were startled by the applause of whatever people hadn’t run and hid the minute the fight broke out. They both reacted sheepishly, Roxas waving slightly. Hayner ran up to them, having worked his way down from the roof the old fashioned way via the stairs. 

“Holy shit!” he said, grabbing Roxas’s shoulders. “You have to enter the Struggle, you’ll kick so much ass!”

“Aw, c’mon,” Roxas blushed. “Just doing my job.”

“Monsters don’t stand a chance with you on the team!” Hayner said triumphantly.

“Yeah, Roxas did real great, huh?” Axel teased, resting his keyblade on his shoulders. 

“Guys!”

The trio turned to see the other half of their group running towards them. 

“What were those things?” Olette asked. 

“I think I know,” Isa said. “But we should probably confirm. Lea, you recognized them too, right?”

“I dunno, they looked sorta familiar,” Axel said. “What, you know those heartless knock-offs?”

“I think it was unversed,” Isa said thoughtfully. “But we should call Ventus to make sure, he’d know.”

“What are unversed?” Pence asked, already taking notes on his phone. 

“The manifestation of negative emotion,” Isa said. “I… had the chance to see them close up recently, but I thought they were all gone.”

“They should be all gone,” Xion said. “I swore, Ven said that with Vanitas gone the unversed would vanish too.”

“I’m calling him now,” Roxas said, pulling out his phone. He made a surprised face when everyone quickly gathered around him to see the screen, and then rolled his eyes. When Ventus picked up the call there was a full screen of people waiting for him.

“Oh, hey guys!” Ventus said cheerfully. He looked a little tired, and with the outdoor training grounds in the background it was safe to assume they’d caught him in the middle of a lesson. “What’s… up?”

The pause was brought about when he made eye contact with Roxas. Roxas also paused, it was still strange for them, to see their own face looking back at them. Every time they saw each other there was a brief moment of confusion as they wrapped their heads around their identicality. Roxas recovered quickly, shaking his head.

“We uh, had a question about the unversed for you,” he said.

Ventus frowned. “Oh?”

“We think we may have seen some here, in Twilight Town,” Isa added. “But that should be impossible with their master gone, right?”

“I think so…” Ventus said solemnly. “I… I’m not sure if I’m being honest. The unversed came from Vanitas, and he could take them back just as easily as he made them but… I don’t know if they can stick around now that he’s gone or not. Are you sure it was unversed?”

“I got a picture, if it helps,” Olette said, pulling up the picture on her phone and holding it out in front of Roxas’s. Ventus squinted, and his frown grew deeper. 

“It… it looks like them,” Ventus sighed. “Do you guys need help? I can come help.”

“Eh, we can handle it,” Axel said. “Looks like you’ve got your hands full over there.”

“You could say that again, Lea,” Ventus sighed. “When are you and the others going to come down and train too? I’d hate to take the mark of mastery on my own.”

“Studying’s not really my thing,” Roxas said, making Xion giggle. 

“Ven? Who are you talking to?” a voice offscreen called, and Ven started. 

“Ah, that’s Aqua, I gotta get back to training guys. You’ll call me if you need help, right?” he asked.

“Count on it,” Axel shot him a thumbs up.

The line went dead as Ventus hung up to get back to work, and left the T.T.P.S with a name for their problem. 

“Unversed…” Xion sighed. “They showed up when those guys started fighting. It makes sense, they thrive on negative emotion.”

“Oh!” Pence said. “And the guy at the Struggle booth, he was all angry and worried about getting fired!”

“So you think the unversed are causing trouble in town to get some emotion dinner?” Hayner asked.

“It makes sense to me,” Olette agreed. 

“Well, it stops now,” Roxas said, bending down to scoop up the laptop the unversed had dropped and heading over to the guy who had been so mad to lose it. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There's more fanart in the making!!! I can't wait to see the finished piece!! (http://4ddictwithapencil.tumblr.com/post/182970394946/wip-fanart-of-interstellarvagabonds-twilight-town)
> 
> listen guys your comments and fanart are 100% keeping me writing thank you so much <3

“So, I made a post on the Twilight Town community page,” Pence explained. “If anyone sees anything weird, or notices any fights breaking out, they can comment and tell us. Then we can go check it out.”

“Make sure you tell people not to go near those monsters!” Hayner added, nudging Pence aside to look at the laptop. 

“I did,” Pence pushed back, getting a little bit of personal space. 

“So what, we just chill out here till someone comments?” Axel asked. He was perched on a crate, long legs folded up beneath him. Xion was leaning against the wall nearby, whereas Isa and Olette took the couch. There wasn’t much room for all of them at the Usual Place, but they squeezed in.

“Actually, I was thinking,” Olette said. “If the unversed mainly try to stay out of sight while people are around, maybe tonight when everyone’s gone home we could try to find them and see what they’re up to.”

“Good idea,” Isa said. 

“Great, love stake-outs,” Axel sighed. “Sitting and waiting, totally my thing.”

“I figured they would be,” Roxas smirked. “You love doing nothing and laying around.”

“On my own terms!” Axel huffed when Isa and Xion started chuckling.

“So, we’ll sneak out and meet here tonight,” Hayner said. “Everyone in?”

There was a chorus of nods and affirmative sounds. 

 

As part of his penance, Ansem the Wise had secured a home for Roxas and his friends. The same apartment Roxas had lived in in the digital world, now real and with rooms he’d never seen. It occurred to him the first time they explored the place that he’d only ever been in the bedroom. The digital world was strange, it had seemed normal at the time but looking back there were moments when Roxas wanted to be at a place and then simply was. He’d never had to really go downstairs and met parents for breakfast before running off to be with his friends. One minute he was waking up from dreams of Sora and the next he was running through the streets of Twilight Town.

The apartment was just large enough to accommodate the four of them, three bedrooms and a kitchen that was separated from a living room only by a waist high wall. It was furnished, but not quite yet decorated with that same cluttered familiarity of Roxas’s digital memory. He’d found a similar lamp to the one from his old world, a blue orb with spinning fish, and he’d been quick to buy it. It was one step closer to filling his room with things that made it feel homey. 

Xion had been excited to decorate her room as well. Her and Roxas collected shells all day at the beach to fill a big jar which sat on her dresser. She’d also acquired a bedset in shades of blue with a great deal of pillows and a stuffed rabbit with stitched X’s for eyes which only Roxas knew was a gift from Namin é. 

Aside from that the apartment was still a little bare, their main source of income was heartless disposal after all, though Roxas and Isa sometimes picked up odd jobs around town. 

Roxas found Xion adding to her room that night though, spreading a poster up on the wall carefully. 

“What’s… Magic Mirror?” Roxas asked, reading the winding script on the poster.

“It’s a band,” Xion said. “Olette gave me this, she said she’d let me borrow her CDs.”

“Oh, cool!” Roxas jumped up on the bed next to Xion and helped restrain a rebellious corner of poster that refused to be taped down. 

“She let me listen to one of their songs on her phone today, I really like them,” Xion said. “You should listen when I get the CDs. She also said she’d help me pierce my ears!”

“I’m glad you guys get along.” Roxas beamed.

Xion smiled, but she threw a playful elbow Roxas’s way. “You don’t have to say it like that, like you’re looking out for me.”

“I’m just glad my friends get along!” Roxas insisted. 

“They’re nice, and really cool people,” Xion said. “Did you know Pence writes fanfiction for his favorite show? He invited us to come over and watch it, I almost forgot to mention.”

“ _ Unexplained Files  _ right?” Roxas asked. 

“Yeah!” Xion grinned. “It was really cool hanging out with them today. I bet it was fun for you to see Hayner again too.”

“I really missed those guys,” Roxas said fondly. “And even though they didn’t even know me, it feels almost like they missed me too.”

“It feels good to have friends,” Xion said. 

Roxas checked the time on his phone, hopping down from the bed. “It’s almost time to meet up with the others. You ready?”

Xion jumped down as well, toeing into her shoes and grabbing her phone from the nightstand. “Yep!”

Isa was in the kitchen, having clearly started a pot of coffee. Axel was in the living room kicking back on the couch not really paying attention to whatever was playing on the TV. Xion and Roxas both remembered the common room of the castle and how stark and bleak it was compared to the living room with its cozy darkness and the faint golden light of the kitchen, the glow of television and the sounds of people going about their business. They were still living with organization members, still living in a communal space, but it felt less like a prison and more like a home. 

Besides, if they could have picked any organization member to live with it would have been Axel. He was like a brother to them at this point, and though Isa was still new to them and the shadow of Saix sometimes lurked in their memories they were getting to know him. They all had memories and actions from the organization they rather forget, they were willing to let Isa move on so long as they could too. 

“Thanks!” Xion said as Isa handed her a thermos of coffee.

“Since when do you drink coffee?” Roxas asked, taking his own and immediately filling it with sugar and cream. 

“Since a long time, keep up,” Xion teased, keeping her coffee black as she preferred it. 

“Time to go?” Axel asked, not moving an inch from his reclined position on the couch. 

“Yeah, get up,” Isa said, placing Axel’s coffee directly on his forehead. Axel balanced it there precariously for a moment before reaching up and taking it. 

“Roxas, don’t hog the sugar,” Axel said, as Roxas hurried to scoop more sugar into his coffee before Axel came and used the rest of it up. 

“I packed some potions, just in case,” Xion mentioned, grabbing a bag she’d left by the door. 

“Good thinking,” Isa said. “In that case I’d say we’re ready.”

 

Twilight Town was quiet after dark. While the famous sunsets usually brought crowds in during the evening, by night everyone had better places to be. Aside from the few bars in town most places were closed, and so the T.T.P.S was alone on the streets as they looked around for signs of unversed.

“More claw marks,” Olette called, kneeling down by a wall and running fingers over the ruined bricks. 

“I can definitely sense darkness in the area,” Xion agreed, closing her eyes a moment and trying to pinpoint the energy. 

“We’re ready, whenever they wanna show their faces!” Hayner said, jostling Pence who had pulled out a video camera and was recording the scene in night vision mode. 

For awhile it was quiet, they mostly just found claw marks here and there or signs of smashed goods and windows that were sure to have shopkeepers generating plenty of negative emotion in the morning. For about an hour it seemed like the stakeout was a bust, until finally there was movement.

Hayner stepped down the alley into the lot, where the move screen was sitting dark and chairs empty. Seeing something out of the corner of his eye he whipped around, just in time for a large unversed to rise up behind him and push him to the ground.

“Whoa, hey!” Pence shouted, turning his camera onto the scene. “Guys! Over here!”

Before Roxas could react, Olette had run up and grabbed a chair, slamming it into the unversed and freeing Hayner from its grasp. The unversed seemed mostly unbothered by the chair, but Roxas had his keyblade out now to push it back. 

“There’s more over here!” Xion shouted, slashing through an unversed with her keyblade. 

Isa and Axel were fighting back to back, easily gaining ground on their attackers. Olette helped Hayner to his feet, and Hayner immediately adopted an aggressive pose. When an unversed drew close he punched it in what he assumed was its nose. 

The unversed actually looked bewildered, head flying back from the punch. It paused a moment, as if confused, before Roxas hacked it into shadowy bits. 

“They’re running that way!” Pence said, pointing out the retreating unversed who ran or faded into shadow in the direction of the tunnels. 

“After ‘em!” Axel shouted, keyblade glowing bright in the darkness as he chased them down. 

The keyblade wielders plus Isa were first in the chase, followed by the Twilight Town teens, as they ran through the tunnels after the monsters. It was strange, everytime they thought they’d lost them the unversed would pop up again. It took Xion a moment to realize it, but when she did she stopped in her tracks.

“Wait!” she said. “They want us to follow them!”

“Well, what choice do we have?” Hayner said, running past her. “Gotta get rid of them!”

“Hayner, wait!” Roxas said, but he barrelled past Roxas too. Roxas sighed, and chased after his friend. 

They ended up in one of the underground rooms, one with waterways surrounding the main area. The unversed led Hayner right into the middle of the room before fading away. 

“Cowards!” Hayner shouted after them, shaking his fist. 

“I know you’re not talking to us,” a voice said.

Hayner turned around, and rolled his eyes with a grimace when he saw Seifer and his crew kicking back in the corner of the room. 

“Great,” Roxas sighed. It was going to be a long night.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> BOSS FIGHT
> 
> ehhhh I don't feel like this chapter is quality but its been so long since I've updated I'm just putting it out now

“I think we’ve been in this tunnel before,” Axel said, sighing heavily. Pence and Olette stuck close to him, peering at the tunnel walls curiously.

“This is so strange,” Pence said. “I know these tunnels like the back of my hand, everyone does. How can we be lost?”

“I’m worried about the others,” Olette said. “Especially Hayner, he’s always getting himself into trouble. I hope Roxas was able to catch him.”

“Shit, dead end again!” Axel swore, kicking in frustration at the wall. “I do not wanna live the rest of my life as a sewer person, you got that memorized?”

“Is that like… his catchphrase?” Olette whispered to Pence. “Do people have catchphrases?”

“I think it’s kinda cool,” Pence said. “Reminds me of  _ Super Mega Squad _ !” 

Pence struck a pose, which made Olette giggle. Axel chuckled too, even if they were joking at his expense. Self-deprecating humor had always been right up his alley anyway.

He wondered where the others were, and hoped they’d work their way through the maze soon. 

 

“I told them not to run ahead,” Isa said, walking the tunnel with one hand on the wall. There was some magic at work, twisting them around and getting them more lost than the simple tunnels should allow. He could sense darkness, but hadn’t found the source yet and so they were stuck following the tunnels as long as they could.

“I just hope no one’s alone,” Xion said. She was following a ways behind Isa, noting the squared shoulders and overall air of frustration. She knew that posture well.

They hadn’t spoken much, in the ranks of Xehanort’s seekers. Isa gave her orders, she followed them. She was too frightened to question them, too worried she would have nowhere to go and no one to help her with Axel and Roxas unable to remember her. Still, Isa was the one she’d felt closest to out of all of them and that was saying something because they only ever worked together in a cold silence. But he didn’t snipe endlessly at her like Larxene, didn’t wear a dark secretive smile like Xigbar, was around way more than Demyx… so she got used to him.

She got used to his anger. She liked it more than she liked the mindless berserker rage that took him in combat but… that didn’t mean she liked it.

“Damn,” Isa slammed his fist into the dead end they came to, and Xion flinched. Isa saw the wince and shrank in on himself a little. 

“You’re afraid of me… aren’t you?” he asked.

“I…” Xion started to say something, finding she had no idea what to say. 

“Don’t lie to me about it,” Isa said sharply. “You’re allowed to be afraid of me, to loathe me, but don’t put on a show of forgiving me if you haven’t!”

“I can forgive you and still feel complicated about you!” Xion shouted back. “You were used just as much as me, but that doesn’t change that you scared me and made me mad… both can be true.”

“That’s just childish.” Isa bristled at her words, wishing he’d just shut up and stop making things worse but unable to do anything but speak out in anger.

“I am a child!” Xion pointed out. “What’s your excuse?”

Before Isa could acknowledge the point, he felt a surge of darkness around them. Xion gasped, backing away from a tendril of darkness rising from the ground towards them.

  
  


“What are you doing here?” Hayner huffed, glaring at Seifer and his crew.

“I could ask you the same thing,” Seifer replied, folding his arms over his chest. “You and your new friend skulking around late at night… seems suspicious.”

“Yeah!” Fuu backed him up. “Suspicious.”

“We’re stopping the monsters that have been harassing people here,” Hayner said. “Looks like you guys are just lazing around!”

“What did you say you little punk?” Seifer growled. They were inches away from each other in seconds, glaring each other down. 

“Guys!” Roxas said, jumping between them. “Stop it!”

“You’re on his side?” Hayner asked in disbelief. 

“I’m not on anyone’s side,” Roxas said. “But the unversed feed on negative emotion, remember? You’re doing just what they want!”

Hayner nodded, taking a deep breath. “Right… I’m not about to get used by some monsters… let’s go.”

Roxas nodded with a proud smile, clapping Hayner on the shoulder and guiding him towards the exit. They were almost there when Seifer called out after them.

“Any excuse to run from a fight, huh?” he shouted. 

“Oh, that’s it!” Hayner shook himself free of Roxas’s grip and rushed Seifer. Before he could throw even one punch, dark tendrils started pushing their way out of the floor. 

“Shit!” Seifer shouted, grabbing his struggle club from the crates him and his friends had been sitting on and trying to whack the nearest tendril. 

“That won’t work!” Roxas said, watching as Seifer and his gang attacked the darkness. “Just get out of here! Go!”

“We’re not gonna leave you alone with this!” Seifer said. 

“... he’s right,” Hayner said. “C’mon, we have to get out of his way.”

Roxas held the dark tendrils back with his keyblade while Hayner convinced Seifer and the others to flee. As soon as they’d left the scene Roxas pushed the tendril that had been pressing on his blade back, and held out his other hand. 

With a flash of light his keyblade changed, just as another appeared in his hand. Oathkeeper and Oblivion, twin rays of light and dark, came into being just in time for Roxas to catch one tendril between the two and rend it to pieces.

“You wanna fight?” Roxas yelled. “Then come on!”

  
  


Xion activated her mimic ability, copying Isa’s moves and strength as they fought against the dark tendrils. For each one they destroyed another took its place and attacked. Isa was flung against a wall, just as Xion dodged a tendril and landed with her keyblade up to block another.

“The body has to be somewhere underground,” Isa said, rising to his feet. “We have to draw it out.”

“Leave it to me,” Xion said, thrusting the tendril away and reaching deep into herself. She didn’t like to do this too often, but if berserker rage wasn’t powerful enough to take this thing down then she needed the even bigger guns. Her keyblade changed, another one appearing in her empty hand. Armor appeared around her in a flash of light, a helmet masking her features. Isa watched, in awe and a little fear as Xion entered the form the Organization had made for her.

With a cry that sounded like glitching echoes, Xion leapt up and drove her keyblades deep into the bricks beneath their feet. Isa heard something shriek in pain, as Xion pulled hard and brought a huge creature up with her keyblades. 

Then the fight was really on.

  
  


“Unversed!” Olette shouted, pointing at the small mouse-like creatures that sprung from the shadows. 

“Stay behind me,” Axel said, summoning his keyblade with a burst of flame. He started batting the creatures aside one by one, as they started gaining on him with their superior numbers. They were small but there were so many of them. He fought to hold them back, away from the unarmed kids behind him, but he could tell he’d fall if this kept up much longer.

“Run!” he shouted, but Pence and Olette just held up their fists hesitantly.

“We won’t leave you here!” Pence said. 

“Yeah, we stick together, no matter what,” Olette said. 

The wall of unversed started to break, pushing past Axel and his keyblade and running for Pence and Olette. 

  
  


Roxas panted, his keyblades scraping on the ground as he dodged another tendril. He couldn’t keep this up forever. He had to take this thing down and fast. 

Suddenly he felt something, a sort of pull deep in his chest. 

_ Xion? _

He could feel Xion fighting somewhere, fighting her hardest. Once, Xion accessing her full power had left Roxas drained. She’d siphoned power from him unwittingly, growing stronger while he grew weaker. Now their connection was different, controlled, and when Xion started to fight Roxas only felt stronger. 

“... right,” he said, understanding what he needed to do. He jumped out of the way of a tendril that slammed into the ground, then he leapt onto it. He ran up the length of the tendril until he was almost at the ceiling, then he turned and jumped with his keyblades pointed down at the ground. He called upon Xion and her strength, his keyblades breaking through the brick and stabbing into the unversed hiding underneath. 

He pulled the thing from the ground, like a snail out of its shell, and started hacking and slashing at it as fast as he could. The unversed screeched as Roxas jumped back and blasted it with a ball of dark and light magic. He ran for it, twirling his blades so they connected with a shower of sparks just before he delivered the killing blow. 

Across the tunnels, Xion and Isa were also finishing off an unversed, driving their weapons into its exposed body with angry primal roars. The unversed burst, vanishing in a wave of darkness that dissipated into the air. Xion took a shaky step forward, her armor starting to vanish along with her keyblades, and then fell to one side. 

Isa caught her, and kept her upright. She smiled and nodded her thanks. 

“We did just what it wanted…” he said. “Fed it with negative emotion, gave it strength.”

“Don’t feel too bad,” Xion said with a soft grin. “You can’t help being so negative.”

Isa gave her a withering look, but it only spurred on her laughter. 

“I’m sorry,” he said, once her laughter faded. “I shouldn’t take out my frustration on you… I-”

“Look,” Xion sighed. “Our past is more complicated than it should be… I look at Hayner and the others and I see people who have never had to face a life where… they were born a clone of someone else, had their hearts ripped out, lived in darkness, followed an evil organization… we’ve had too many complicated things happen for anything to be easy but… I want easy now. I want to just forgive you and move on… and I think if you’re going to take your part of the blame for how complicated things were… maybe you could just let me? Just let me be… scared and angry but also get to know you and forgive you?”

Isa looked at her. The girl he’d once called a puppet, who had filled him with jealousy and anger. They’d both been pushed into this at such a young age, but he’d grown up and she still had a chance to. Maybe she was right, maybe it was better to just accept that bad things had happened to them and to try and build something new out of the trauma of the past. 

“I… think I can do that,” Isa said. “But on one condition. If I make you scared or angry will you tell me so I can try to make things right?”

“I will,” Xion said. “But you make things right all the time. Making us snacks and coffee when we go out, making Axel laugh and smile, and the way you look so sorry everytime you snap at one of us. I know you’re trying… and it’s not like I don’t have some trying of my own to do. All of us do.”

“We’re a bit of a broken bunch,” Isa sighed. 

“I’m sure it’s mostly Axel,” Xion joked. “Let’s blame him.”

“That could work,” Isa smirked. 

“Hey now, I’m no one’s scapegoat!”

Isa and Xion turned to see Axel joining them, Olette and Pence close by. He pretended to glare at them, but quickly gave up on the offended act to check on them. “You guys okay? You look rough… Xion, you need help?”

“We’re fine, Axel,” Xion said, pushing off of Isa to stand on her own. “You worry too much.”

“Well, we got one less thing to worry about now,” Axel said. “Looks like our little unversed problem is solved.”

“Oh?” Isa asked, quirking an eyebrow.

“We were fighting loads of them!” Olette said. “When they all just suddenly disappeared!”

“Poof!” Pence elaborated helpfully, making a gesture that seemed to indicate the sound effect ‘poof.’

“It must have been when we took down the big one,” Xion said. 

“Ooooh like a hive mind,” Pence said. 

“Wait, where’s Roxas and Hayner?” Olette asked.

“I felt Roxas nearby,” Xion said. “But we haven’t seen him or Hayner since we got split up.”

“Well we better go looking then,” Axel said. “Can’t leave those two on their own, they might break something important.”

“Bold words from the man who spilled coffee on the Organization’s computer three days after I specifically mentioned the no food or drinks in the lab rule,” Isa said. 

“Let’s just go find them.” Axel rolled his eyes.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry I just had to hurry up and end this fic!!! Finals week is almost over and I'm finally got some antidepressants so hopefully all future writing endeavors will be better
> 
> to be honest this project didn't turn out as good as I would have liked, it sorta got away from me in the end. HOWEVER I hope to write further TTPS adventures so there's room for growth there AND I would like to open up the option to all of you guys! If you wanna write TTPS stuff, I give you total permission! All I ask is no underage shipping and to just be cool you know? And also tag me cause I wanna read it!!!
> 
> Anyway, hopefully there's more TTPS stuff in the future, just had to end this story real quick cause it was getting hard to write but I couldn't leave it without an end.

 

They found Roxas and Hayner walking through the tunnels looking for the rest of the group. Hayner was supporting Roxas a little, though he kept jostling the exhausted and injured keyblade wielder everytime he excitedly related the story of Roxas’s battle to his friends. Roxas, to his credit, just smiled and laughed despite the jostling. 

“But, are those things really gone?” Pence asked as they exited the tunnel. The sun was rising, and most of the members of the T.T.P.S were yawning. 

“Who knows?” Roxas said. “They weren’t even supposed to be here in the first place.”

“Well, we managed to find a way to live without Sora… maybe they found a way to live without Vanitas?” Xion suggested.

“Don’t compare us to them!” Roxas protested, getting a giggle out of Xion. 

“Sorry,” she said. “It’s just… either they’ve adapted like us… or he’s still out there somewhere.”

“Sounds like a problem for tomorrow, I’m gonna go sleep for a year,” Axel groaned.

“Yeah, we’ll keep an eye out for more unversed, unexplained happenings, and monsters!” Pence said. “But until then… I should really get some sleep before school.”

“Like there’s any chance of that,” Hayner said rolling his eyes. 

“I’m just glad I got the homework done early,” Olette sighed. 

Hayner stiffened, his relaxed posture growing tense. “... homework?”

“Pfft. Classic Hayner,” Roxas said, hands on his hips and shaking his head with a grin. Hayner pretended to swipe at him, and was unsurprised when Roxas dodged easily. 

“Then let’s all get home,” Isa said. “...hmmm…”

“What are you thinking about?” Xion asked.

“I’m wondering… should they be in school?” Isa asked, gesturing towards Roxas and Xion and looking to Axel. 

“What? No!” Roxas and Xion cried out together. 

“We never finished school and we turned out fine,” Axel said with a shrug. 

“We ended up in a cult,” Isa pointed out. “Now we’re unemployed and run around with teenagers solving ghost crimes.”

“Yeah, sounds fine to me!” Axel grinned. 

They walked home, with Hayner Pence and Olette splitting off as they passed their homes. All the while Roxas and Xion made their argument against school, an argument Isa seemed to be keeping up simply because he found their protests amusing. 

The sun kept rising, and they went home feeling sure there’d be no more trouble in Twilight Town… for awhile anyway.


End file.
